Dear Editor:
Re: NDP bewilders reader, letters to the editor, Aug. 27.
Let me try to clear up some of the reader’s bewilderment. The study he refers to that shows the Canadian middle class is better off than the American middle class is based on data gathered in 2010. At that time, the U.S. middle class had just been flattened by the worst recession in 80 years. Canada avoided the worst effects of the recession because of banking controls brought in by the previous Liberal government. We would have been even better off if, before the recession hit, Harper hadn’t already eaten through the surplus that the Liberals left him.
Since 2010, Harper’s policies have led to a steady decline in Canada’s economic growth rate from 3.4 per cent to minus 0.5 per cent. We’re now the only G7 country in a recession. Meanwhile, the American administration wisely resisted right-wing pressure to adopt similar policies, and their growth rate has risen from two to three per cent over the same time. We may have been in better economic shape than the Americans in 2010, but no longer thanks to Conservative policies.
Michael Otte, Burnaby
